"Report is not likely to belie me," he said, "since there is no mystery in my life to afford food for gossip. If by a certain villa at Fulham you mean Hilton House, you are not mistaken. I have the honour to be a frequent guest at that house." "It is an honour which many of us have enjoyed," answered Reginald, with a sneer. "An honour which I used to find deuced expensive, by Jove!" exclaimed Viscount Caversham, who was standing near Douglas Dale. "That was at the time when Sir Reginald Eversleigh usurped the position of host in Madame Durski's house," replied Douglas. "You would find things much changed there now, Caversham, were the lady to favour you by an invitation. When Madame Durski first came to England she was so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of evil counsellors. She has learned since to know her friends from her enemies." "She is a very charming woman," drawled the viscount, laughingly; "but if you want to keep a balance at your banker's, Dale, I should strongly advise you to refuse her hospitality." "Madame Durski will shortly be my wife," replied Douglas, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the bystanders; "and the smallest word calculated to cast a slur on her fair fame will be an insult to me--an insult which I shall know how to resent." This announcement fell like a thunderbolt in the assembly of fashionable idlers. All knew the history of the house at Fulham. They knew of Paulina Durski only as a beautiful, but dangerous, syren, whose fatal smiles lured men to their ruin. That Douglas Dale should unite himself to such a woman seemed to them little short of absolute madness. Love must be strong indeed which will face the ridicule of mankind unflinchingly. Douglas Dale knew that, in redeeming Paulina from her miserable situation, in elevating her to a position that many blameless and well-born Englishwomen would have gladly accepted, he was making a sacrifice which the men amongst whom he lived would condemn as the act of a fool. But he was willing to endure this, painful though it was to him, for the sake of the woman he loved. "Better that I should have the scorn of shallow-brained worldlings than that the blight on her life should continue," he said to himself. "When she is my wife, no man will dare to question her honour--no woman will dare to frown upon her when she enters society leaning on my arm." This is what Douglas Dale repeated to himself very often during his courtship of Paulina Durski. This is what he thought as he stood erect and defiant in the crowded room of the Pall Mall club, facing the curious looks of his acquaintances.